did we create jojo siwa? (2024)

Only three people in the history of humanity were born without original sin: Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, and JoJo Siwa. In all my years tuned into the zeitgeist, especially to the rebrands of former child stars, I have never seen a non-trajectory quite like hers. A former “cast member”1 on Dance Moms and Nickelodeon juggernaut, Joelle “JoJo” Siwa is a one-woman empire. She led an entire generation of children into bow-wearing hysteria, a Pied Piper dispatched by Walmart to wrack up $400 million worth of sales. That amount of wealth isn’t shocking for a child star - Justin Bieber famously questioned what other outcome would befall a teenager worth $200 million at his Comedy Central roast, making the point after years of hooliganism, property destruction, and f*ckboy antics. Surprised more people don’t compare the two, honestly. The Miley one, that makes sense. I mean, have you seen the new JoJo music video?

But Justin aligns closer in terms of sheer cultural dominance. Bieber Fever was everywhere in the early 2010s. And ubiquity breeds exploitation. That poor boy was thrust onto arena stages and worked to the bone until breakdown was inevitable. So his good-girl-gone-bad era was recognizable, dare I say conventional. It reflected the desire to be cool, a desire all teenagers crave, especially the famous ones, maybe more so than their normy peers, a desire that compels them to do the stupidest sh*t the world has ever seen. Teenage hormones + unlimited clash flow - any stability or “no” men = utter chaos. So he made a fair point. A point he could make given that his powerless associates took the hardest falls for him.

Let’s go over it anyway. Justin spent his formative years in teeny bop prison. Singing for his million dollar supper every night, hordes of girls tracking his location down to longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates, misogynistic2 and hom*ophobic attacks from the media, the public, and his fellow celebrities every damn day. Who wouldn’t lose their mind? The Hollywood system chewed him up, spit him out, and sent him on a path to destruction. He was so strung out at the end of his teen years, his own manager assumed he would die of an overdose.3 Boxed in by mass market appeal, bound by the shackles of cringe, Justin acted out to reclaim a sense of his identity, to demarcate what he actually thought was “cool.” He struck hard against the clean-cut persona propped up by the Tiger Beat magazine covers and took the road most traveled for child stars. You know the drill. Visual promiscuity. Lawbreaking. Appropriation of Black culture. Tried and true and embarrassing every single time. Justin is the paradigm of the typical child star cycle, scaling up the system before rebelling against it, tearing it apart, losing public favor so a beautiful redemption arc can pull them out of rock bottom.

Not JoJo. Never, not once has this young woman shown a desire to break from the marketing forces that molded her into a clown-for-hire. Her rebrand, unlike all the ones that came before her, does not indicate that there is a complex, messy human being that exists behind the billboards and commercials and vlogs, one who seeks the polar opposite of their sparkly, saccharine, star-spangled child stardom. Her rebrand is just another stepping stone for a career laser-focused on producing capital. She understood that meltdowns make money, so her transition into adulthood became a hollow retread of shock jock spectacles perfected by her predecessors, all bark and no bite.

A genuine child star breakdown arc belies a sense of shame for their past. JoJo has no past. Or shame. Her hyperactive personality has carried over from her Nickelodeon days. Never breaking. Never wavering. Not even a slip, a crack in the mask. The personification of those Roblox/slime/Subway Surfer videos, JoJo has maintained our attention through her abrasively corny output. But now that she’s grown up, her newest antics try to reflect her age. Back then she released Kidz Bop bangers; now she chugs vodka at Pride performances and gyrates maniacally in her music videos. And it all amounts to nothing. No maturity then, no maturity now, no sense that she has emotionally developed since her Dance Moms days.

Even at his worst moments, we could see the “real” Justin breaking through, struggling to deal with the insurmountable pressure of fame that confronted him at every turn. JoJo does not seem to suffer from any kind of pressure, even though she faces more of it in this day and age. She embraces her infamy, doubling down on tastelessness when a mere mortal would buckle from humiliation, stress, and the cruelty of online strangers. I mean, she literally made this TikTok to celebrate producing the most disliked music video from a female artist in 2024. This isn’t a joke to cope with the pain. This isn’t even, like, a normal joke, poking fun at herself and her frenzied persona. She is dead serious in praising her notoriety. She loves it. “Notorious” is everything she ever has been and will be until the end of time. No one has let her know (BE) anything different.

Where is Joelle? Is she somewhere in there, do you think? Buried deep under layers and layers of her public personality, a necessary bulwark against an onslaught of mockery? What does gay pop mean besides another sublimation of her identity into the JoJo Siwa Money-Making Machine, that behemoth to end all behemoths? This way of life can’t be what she wants. It just can’t. Who can live like this? How has she not fallen under the weight, our poor twenty-first century Atlas?

I blame social media. Not to sound like a fearmonger or the United States Surgeon General. I do blame a lot of other entities too, don’t worry: her parents, Abby Lee, Lifetime, Nickelodeon, Walmart, the whole damn country while we’re at it. But social media must be faulted. At least Justin was an old man before Tik Tok lives and daily Youtube vlogs were de rigueur for child stars. He could just post his passive aggressive “Selena take me back!!!!!!”4 pictures and be on his merry way. JoJo has no respite off stage. Oh no. There is no time to think. At all. No disconnect between the Madison Square Garden self and the self tucked away in the luxury suite. They have merged. They are one. And nowhere to escape from the crowds either because they are constantly with her, their insults making up the majority of her phone notifications. There can be no contemplation of the validity of her career choice at the expense of privacy, anonymity, normalcy. She’s never had access to any of those attributes. Not when there’s another video to post, another interview to conduct, another product to sell. She is On On On, Only Only Only, every second of every day.

Because of social media, this girl’s primary friends are 30-something freaks who hijack youth culture (and youths themselves) for profit. Because of social media, she lampoons herself on podcasts for our entertainment. We’re enraptured by this creature with no filter, no self-awareness, no one to shake her by the shoulders and tell her she is the laughingstock of the Internet. Because of social media, JoJo can’t catch a goddamn break. Ever. She cannot escape from her one facade, the only facade, the definitely-chugging-those-illegal-Four-Lokos-before-pressing-play Facade. Too much to lose financially if she does. So here she is stuck on her hamster wheel, puking out content to stoke our hysteria, rack up that view count, rake in those millions.

I wonder how she would have faired in an alternate life. One where her boundless energy could have been contained properly, checked and balanced by kids her own age. One in which she’d be the Fun Friend, crazy yet loveable. She’s only twenty-one. Can you believe it? Not a child, not even a teenager anymore, but still. So young. So young! She could be entering her senior year of college if I did my math right. Can you imagine? This JoJo? At a university? No. Absolutely not. This JoJo would be torn to shreds before she could bust out a TikTok dance.

But funnily enough, given all this context, and all these thought exercises, her music career is what saddens me the most. What a hard, interesting pivot she could have taken had there been any morsel of authenticity left in her body. Music could have been so many things for her. A real declaration of her identity at the expense of the de-fanged one foisted onto her. An outlet for her emotions, repressed down deep in her media-trained brain. A way to process what she’s been through, how she looks at the world now and how she can refract it back at us.

Sike. Of course not! Her catalog of annoying-ass songs points to an illegitimate adult maturity. Stupid for stupidity’s sake. She came back like a boomerang and found out karma’s a bitch. Who needs artistic depth (or at least a funky beat) when you can shoot to the top with garbage?

What I’m Watching/Reading

Eat Pray Love, dir. Ryan Murphy
You read that right, Ryan Murphy directed this???? I had no idea until I Googled the cast list. It makes sense though, the editing felt kinda frantic a la Glee. But aside from the Ryan Murphy of it all, this was pretty cute! And passably enjoyable! I’ll watch Julia Roberts in anything, so surprised it took me so long to get around to this. And Richard Jenkins performed one of the most best monologues I’ve seen onscreen? Like ever?? Genuinely! Definitely not expecting that, and definitely happened because he’s just a fantastic actor. There was some early 2010s-era weirdness to it (i.e. Orientalist viewpoints into India and Bali, problematic food/weight comments, etc.), but a nice Netflix watch that will turn your brain off.

Circe, Madeline Miller

Pleasantly surprised! Madeline Miller has been the ultimate TikTok author (outside of Colleen Hoover) for years now, and happy to say she lives up to expectations. The writing was smooth, pacing was great, and I really enjoyed the retelling of Circe’s mythology. You can tell she did her research. Like, an extensive amount. Very interested to read The Song of Achilles now (and maybe re-read The Odyssey? The world’s my oyster lol)

Tehanu, fourth book in the Earthsea Cycle, Ursula K. Le Guin

Officially back on my Le Guin bullsh*t and have to say, this one is my favorite book so far of the series. Love that her intention was to focus on the ignored characters of fantasy books: children, women, old people, disabled people, etc. Such a beautiful story, and an incredible addition enhanced by the foundation of the first three books. Ugh. She can do no wrong. LOVE HER 😤😤